Re: No fault non-archiving.

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Tue, 4 Jul 2006, Richard Feinman wrote:

> I get several reprint requests for papers I published in
> Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders which is not on PubMed.
> Does anybody know how the people who request them would find a
> self-archived version if I made it available?

Through google, or paracite or oaister or google scholar or 
scirus or scopus or...

> I don't know how to find other self-archived papers except by 
> contacting the author (which is frequently faster than going to 
> their website and looking for an archive).

Try paracite:

http://paracite.eprints.org/

> So I think I am only at fault if I know that self-archiving 
> will help.

You are not at fault for not knowing till now; if you don't know 
as of know, you are at fault...

> Does self-archiving actually help anybody?  How many 
> researchers know how to find author-archived material?  This is 
> a question, not a challenge. Why self-archive if nobody can 
> find the MS?

Apparently enough of them to give self-archived papers a 25% - 
250%+ advantage in citation counts over papers published in the 
same journal and year, but not self-archives.

     http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

> Also, the fact that I am not supposed to put up the final pdf 
> is so infuriating that I doubt I would do it anyway -- somebody 
> tell me with a straight face that the value added in turning a 
> MS into a pdf is in any way comparable to the value of the 
> content of the MS.

[With a straight face]: The value of the author's final draft 
(even in ascii!), the "postprint" or "eprint," is infinitely 
superior to the value of no access at all, for all those would-be 
users whose institutions cannot afford access to the journal in 
which it was published. (And the issue is not PDF itself, for the 
author can trivially generate PDF from MS Word, or what have you; 
the issue is the publisher's proprietary PDF, for which there is 
neither the need, nor the justification of insisting upon, if the 
publisher does not which to have it self-archived: it is more 
than enough for the publisher to give its blessing to the 
self-archiving of the author's own refereed, revised, corrected, 
accepted final draft -- whether it is in TeX, Word, PDF, 
Word-star, or what-have-you.)

> And then there is the idea that every time you self-archive you 
> are making a statement that the purpose of the publisher is to 
> restrit access to your work which you may be able to overcome.

Nothing of the sort. Every time you self-archive you are doing 
precisely the same kind of thing (though far less effortfully or 
often) you did when you mailed out paper reprints to 
reprint-requesters, namely, you are supplementing the published 
version -- for those would-be users whose institutions cannot 
afford access to the journal -- with an indivdiual copy, 
compliments of the author.

(I hope you will not reply to remind me that paper reprints were 
exact copies of the published version: please see above, 
concerning eprints.)

Stevan Harnad